1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vehicle information providing device for providing traffic conditions at an intersection to a driver at an appropriate timing.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, in the field of vehicles, there have been proposed and put to practical use various drive assistance devices for assisting drive to help safe traveling by recognizing front environment based on information obtained from an ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems), an inter-vehicle communication system, an onboard image processing system, a radar device, or the like.
As a vehicle information providing device of such a drive assistance device, Japanese Patent Unexamined Application Publication (JP-A) No. 2002-340583 (hereinafter, referred to as Patent Document 1) discloses a technique for a device for displaying information of other vehicles obtained by inter-vehicle communication or road-vehicle communication together with information of the own vehicle on a map, wherein traveling conditions of the own vehicle and other vehicles are compared, other vehicles that are anticipated to affect travel of the own vehicle are determined, the determined other vehicles are displayed on the map as characters, and the characters are displayed while changing display style of the characters according to information of other vehicles obtained by the communication, for example.
When a vehicle makes a right turn at an intersection or passes through an intersection, it is normally preferable that a driver drive while checking the traffic environment with his or her own eyes. However, there may be a blind spot due to a right-turning oncoming vehicle, building, or the like, in which case the information providing device disclosed in Patent Document 1 greatly exhibits its performance in complementing information for drivers. However, if display by an information providing device is performed more than necessary, a viewing direction (interest) of a driver is not oriented to check the actual traffic environment and spreads to the information providing device so that the intended purpose of drive assistance, that is, to improve safety, may not be achieved.